Trump’s Efforts to Oust Mueller Show the ‘Cancer’ on This Presidency

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Donald F. McGahn II, the White House counsel, last January.CreditStephen Crowley/The New York Times

By Harry Litman

Jan. 26, 2018

Thursday’s report in The Times that President Trump ordered the firing of the special counsel Robert Mueller last June, only to back off after the White House counsel, Donald McGahn, threatened to resign, is explosive on many levels.

On the surface, the revelation is one more piece of damning evidence in the now-overwhelming case of obstruction of justice that Mr. Mueller has assembled. The core of the case — the Feb. 14 meeting in which Mr. Trump asked the director of the F.B.I., James Comey, to drop the investigation against the national security adviser, Michael Flynn; Mr. Trump’s subsequent sacking of Mr. Comey; and Mr. Trump’s serial lies about Mr. Comey’s firing — has long been solid. And Mr. Mueller has added significant pieces of circumstantial evidence, such as Mr. Trump’s apparent knowledge that Mr. Flynn had lied to the F.B.I. when he buttonholed Mr. Comey.

Thursday’s revelation seals the deal. The president’s attempted ouster of Mr. Mueller seems plainly to have been intended to squelch Mr. Mueller’s investigation. Moreover, Mr. Trump’s attempts to conceal the obvious with a rank, virtually comical explanation provide additional evidence of guilty intent. Mr. Mueller, the president argued, could not serve because, years before, he had resigned his membership at the Trump National Golf Club in Virginia because of a dispute over fees; or he needed to be fired because he had worked at the law firm that previously represented Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

Why strain to concoct such feeble rationales unless the truth is indefensible?

Then there is the provocative point that Mr. Trump’s efforts were parried by the threat to resign of his own White House counsel, Mr. McGahn. White House counsels are not in the habit of bucking their bosses that way; it’s an extraordinarily rare event.

Mr. McGahn obviously feared at least a political firestorm. Yet if that was all he feared, one would expect him to have saluted and carried out the president’s orders. Concerns about politics aren’t a hallmark of Mr. McGahn’s tenure, to say the least. The threat to resign carries with it the possible implication that he saw more: a crime, even a continuing conspiracy, that he wanted to distance both Mr. Trump and himself from.

That sort of intervention is consistent with more principled motives and a desire to save Mr. Trump not only from himself but also from despoiling the presidency (which the White House counsel in fact represents). It’s also consistent with the Washington tradition of self-serving conduct with an eye toward ensuring that you don’t go down with the ship. Perhaps in this case it was both.

In any event, Mr. McGahn’s pushback starts to look like a John Dean moment in the Trump administration: the juncture when actors in the White House, including the White House counsel, began to realize that there is, in Mr. Dean’s famous phrase, “a cancer on the presidency.” Reports have been rife of a dispirited and paranoid White House, with as many internecine battles as there are combinations of officials.

These are the very people who have heard Mr. Trump fulminate about the Mueller investigation for months; they also have worked next to multiple colleagues whom they know have now provided chapter and verse of internal discussions. And they know that there is more to come, beginning with Steve Bannon’s interview with the special counsel.

This leads to the fascinating feature of The Times report: The events it details happened over six months ago but are only now coming to light. For whose benefit? The Times report is sourced to four people, as were follow-up reports from other news organizations. Some number of people in the know have decided, perhaps in concert, to drop a bombshell now, one they kept to themselves for many months.

Perhaps from their insiders’ perches, they see that Mr. Mueller is wrapping up a case of obstruction that the president probably cannot defend against, because he is guilty. And perhaps they are jockeying to position themselves favorably, in the belief that Mr. Trump may be impeached (if not removed from office) and that there will be a broad reckoning,

One thinks of Richard Nixon, at the end, babbling morosely to Henry Kissinger, one of the few men left in his inner circle. This is nowhere near the end of the Trump White House. But the picture of a president isolated and abandoned still resonates.

Mr. Trump has managed the White House and the government with bully and bluster. His signature executive fiat has been “You’re fired,” like the reality-TV star he often seems to think he still is. He has richly earned his staff’s mistrust with his erratic and despotic behavior.

Now a year into his presidency, he has every reason to think as he looks around him that his staff is wondering who will be next to go — by discharge or criminal charge — and there is nobody whose loyalty he can be sure of except for that of his son Donald Trump Jr. That’s not enough to carry him, and the country, through three more years.

Harry Litman (@harrylitman), a former United States attorney and deputy assistant attorney general, teaches at the University of California, San Diego, department of political science and practices law at Constantine Cannon.